The recent meeting of the Cambridge Health Network on dementia swung between pessimism and optimism, reflecting perhaps the national feeling. Dementia, said several speakers, is where cancer was 30 years […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Clinicians support a review of mammography
Five weeks ago I wrote about the difficulty I was having in finding somebody to speak in favour of mammography at a conference on controversies in breast cancer. I feared […]
Richard Smith: Communicating with patients about ductal carcinoma in situ
Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) is a condition we don’t understand. We don’t know its significance, how to describe it, and how to treat it. Worse, we may have created […]
Richard Smith: Let the tobacco company see the data
Philip Morris International, a tobacco company, is using the Freedom of Information Act to request data from research conducted at Stirling University into why young people start smoking. The university […]
Richard Smith: How much are you giving to the poor?
Would you give $1000 to stop a child drowning? Almost certainly. Why then are you not giving all the $1000 you can spare to save the lives of the 9 […]
Richard Smith: Zero based healthcare
You may have heard of zero based budgeting where an organisation starts from the assumption that nothing that was in last year’s budget will automatically be in next year’s and […]
Richard Smith: UN meeting on non-communicable diseases goes wobbly
Things are not going well with the UN high level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that will take place in New York in a month’s time. The aim was to […]
Richard Smith: Are alcohol companies doomed to cause harm?
Tobacco companies clearly cause harm, and we will always need food companies. But what about alcohol companies? Can they produce net benefit? I’ve been pondering this question for three decades, […]
Richard Smith: What to do about binge drinking?
Earlier this week I attended a lunch in an expensive London restaurant where a motley collection of people discussed what to do about binge drinking. Alcohol was served, but I […]
Richard Smith: My vain search for a pro-mammography speaker
For the past two months I have been trying to find somebody to speak in in favour of mammography in a debate, but I have failed. Some six people have […]